


Elegy

by Artemis (Citrine)



Category: Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 04:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Citrine/pseuds/Artemis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson's life, thoughts and reflections between 'The Final Problem' and 'The Empty House'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elegy

**Author's Note:**

> My first posting here. Comments welcome.

As an Englishman, a gentleman, one must maintain ones equilibrium at all times whether in public or private. One cannot simply succumb to grief, shoulders must be squared and the responsibilities of ones position must not be shirked even for instant.

To do otherwise, to fall to into a black pit of emotion, would be to fail all those who depend upon my sound judgement and proper conduct. My wife is in delicate health and it is my duty and my privilege to provide for her.  Her illness has only one inevitable outcome, but while she lives I ply her with trinkets, read her favourite, tiresome Dickens to her long into the night and then leave her to sleep undisturbed.

She tells her friends that I am the most attentive and considerate of husbands. The dear girl is proud to be my wife, proud of the medical practice I build up from nothing after I returned alone from Switzerland. I have not the heart to tell her that much of my income is derived from those tales I wrote of him, which fascinate the public even more now that he is gone.

It is not that my practice does poorly, only that it is more modest than she supposes. Most of my patients like me well enough to pay their medical bills on time.  They tell me that I am kind, understanding and even paternal in my treatment of them, and they recommend me to their friends.

However, a few patients complain that I am cold and unsympathetic to their sorrows.  I regret that they find me so, but I cannot abide those weak souls who whinge and whine at the cruelties of fate.  Such things must be borne with fortitude; one cannot just descend into a storm of weeping. So I am sorry about your sweetheart, but hold your head up, be a man and if you must cry like a child please do so at home and not in my consulting room.

Nor upon the wild alpine hillside with the falls raging like thunder at your back and the abyss before you. It was a moment’s weakness. I have not wept since and I will not do so again. Nor will I take out and reread the note he left for me, which lies pressed between the pages of the first edition of my tales of our adventures, the one that I inscribed for him.

I am an Englishman, a gentleman and to all intents and purposes I behave as such.

I am a perfect automaton.


End file.
